Additional New Features in the "EPLAN PLC & Bus Extension" Extension Module

Display of up to 300 PLC connection points per device in reports

In the PLC reports, for example the PLC card overview, the number of reportable PLC connection points has been extended from 100 per device to now 300.

New popup menu for addressing PLC connection points

In order to readdress areas of PLC connection points within a PLC control system the Readdress PLC connection points dialog is available to you. You open this dialog via the menu items Project data > PLC > Address, after you have marked several PLC connection points in the graphical editor, in the PLC navigator or in the device navigator.

You can now also directly call up this dialog by using the new popup menu item Address when editing in the PLC navigator. The popup menu item is available in the tree view as well as in the list view.

Benefit:

PLC addresses can now be conveniently assigned per selected device or rack via the new Address popup menu item in the PLC navigator.

Round-trip engineering with the TIA Portal

With the new version of EPLAN Electric P8 improved round-trip engineering with the TIA Portal of Siemens is now possible. When reading TIA Portal exports in the AutomationML format, EPLAN assigns the PLC connection points (inputs or outputs) to the project data on the basis of the channel number.

Marking PLC connection points with an empty symbolic address for deletion during import

When importing an AutomationML file, PLC connection points in EPLAN are now marked with the property Marked for deletion, if the symbolic address in the import file is empty, but the Symbolic address (automatic) property is filled at the associate PLC connection point in EPLAN. The existing symbolic address remains. You can find and check these PLC connection points via the check run 004029.

Exporting and importing free symbolic addresses

For the PLC data exchange in AutomationML format free symbolic addresses (that are not assigned to a PLC connection point) are now also exported and imported.

Benefit:

After the import of an AutomationML file, the free symbolic addresses existing there are available in EPLAN and can be used from the assignment list.

New data type LWORD

The LWORD data type is now supported for the addressing of PLC inputs and outputs. This way a long word addressing (8 bytes or 64 bits) is possible. To this purpose the Addresses tab has been extended in the PLC specific settings with the additional LWORD row (for both inputs and outputs).

In the Data type field you can select the LWORD entry from the drop-down list or enter it manually. In addition the entries INT, DINT, LINT are possible, these correspond to WORD, DWORD, LWORD and are supported for the PLC data exchange in the AutomationML format.

Signal range removed from check run message 004028

When the check message 004028 is run the Signal range property is now not checked anymore.